


James and the Darkness

by thundercaya



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, M/M, Workplace Warzone compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 13:14:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10572051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercaya/pseuds/thundercaya
Summary: James could really use a light.





	

For the most part, James has learned to live with the darkness.

He doesn’t have much of a choice, or rather he does, but the other option--which he dwells on every time his mind stills for even a moment--is too terrifying to act on. Life is torture, but it ends eventually, and if death is somehow worse, then what? So he lives with the darkness, lets it sink into his very core and reach its tendrils out to every edge of his being. He feels heavy and cold and unbearably slow and just waits for it to lift itself back out again, because what else can he do? At least by now he knows that it _will_ lift itself out again, though that also means that he knows that it _will_ always come back.

Nothing can call it in or send it away. It comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes it moves in predictable ways, but even that offers little help, since there’s no preparation that can be made even when James knows it’s coming, except maybe stocking up on easy food so he doesn’t starve when he loses the will to even take care of himself.

In his younger years James relied on his family, mostly his mother, to sustain him through the periods of darkness, to remind him that they didn’t last, as endless as they felt. He doesn’t do that now. No one has told him that he can’t, that he needs to tough it out on his own whatever the risk, but he feels it so deeply that it must be true. Reaching out to them in such an advanced stage of his life would show a weakness, an immaturity, an inability to exist as an adult in a world everyone else seems to be able to manage well enough on their own. Nevermind that not everyone carries darkness; it’s probably his own fault that he does.

His mother still checks in on him from time to time, but he always assures her he’s fine. Maybe she believes him by now. Maybe that’s why she reaches out less and less, and everyone else--who gets their news of James from her--just leaves him alone entirely. He’s grown out of it, they must think. He’s sold them the lie all too well.

There is one person who isn’t buying. Thomas, who when it comes to James can take “no” for an answer in almost every situation, refuses to back down when the question is “do you need help?” James hates it. God, how he hates that there’s someone who sees him for what he is, a person he admires no less, who knows that he's weak and flailing and drowning in darkness as often as not. Someone who hurts for him, and what right does he have to make anyone hurt for him?

But also he loves the warm strength of Thomas’ arms around him when he's up all night, far preferable to tossing and turning alone in a cold empty bed, and despite what James might feel about what he deserves, probably objectively better than melting into the floor. He loves the soft lips framed by rough hairs pressed to his forehead, his cheeks, and only when Thomas knows that's what he wants, his lips. He loves waking up or coming home to find food waiting for him, not having to worry about that one thing for that one moment. He loves hearing the words “I love you” when he knows he couldn't love himself if he tried and he doesn't have it in him to try.

Thomas can’t drive the darkness away--nothing can--but he can remind James that there’s such a thing as light.


End file.
